[kevstev]

Eh... yes but, I can write a sql query and come back a year later and understand it at first glance, or maybe if its really complicated a minute or two.

Writing a regex involves always looking up the syntax, and being unable to read it an hour later without having to carefully disect it. I say this with 20+ YOE and I think I am better than the average bear with them.

That said, knowing what they can do is important and very useful. Its just the implementation that never quite sticks.

[recursive]

> Writing a regex involves always looking up the syntax

No. I mean, I believe it does for you. I use it often enough that it's always fresh. On the other hand, I always need to look up the syntax of CREATE TABLE. My experience can be described the same as yours.

[marginalia_nu]

I think the main problem with regular expressions is that there are so many dialects that are subtly different. The same sort of goes for SQL, but it's not quite as bad as regular expressions are.

(Other big problem with regexes is that they are strictly slower than handrolling the equivalent string parsing code, and kind of a denial of service hazard to boot).

[recursive]

There's a standard base dialect of regex that works everywhere, just like SQL.

SQL also tends to be slower than hand optimized data structure wrangling.

If you use untrusted regex, you'll be subject to DOS. If you use untrusted SQL, you'll be subject to much worse.